


pull the covers over your head, and lie as one dead

by wolfhalls



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:48:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfhalls/pseuds/wolfhalls
Summary: The night after he’s summoned to the bridge, he dreams of Laszlo, his broken body spread out unnaturally, mouth gaping soundlessly. He wakes with a start, his sheets damp with sweat, his chest slick with it too. The clock on the far side of the room chimes twice, and then the only sound is John’s breathing, shallow and panicked.Laszlo. Sleepless nights. Hand in hand.(or: John isn't coping, and it turns out Laszlo isn't either.)





	pull the covers over your head, and lie as one dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quentinknockout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentinknockout/gifts).



> set in a nebulous period between ep.1 and ep.2, although it can be read in whichever way you like.
> 
> this is for jo, who i love dearly. we knew this show would be good to us but not THIS GOOD. thanks for putting up with my stream of consciousness texts and then encouraging me to write this. i know i say how great you are a lot but you are my biggest cheerleader and i wouldn't write as well or as often without you in my corner.
> 
> the title comes from bring up the bodies by hilary mantel. the chapter i've lifted it from is full of beautiful passages about dreams and the guilt that keeps you up at night, and how when we are frightened enough, we can imagine anything in the dark. oh, and some musings on torture. if you haven't read any mantel go and buy wolf hall immediately, and pick up bring up the bodies too. you'll be a better human being for it.
> 
> written in a frenzy while listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMV3ofNrzak) on repeat.
> 
> see end notes for some warnings!

The night after he’s summoned to the bridge, he dreams of Laszlo, his broken body spread out unnaturally, mouth gaping soundlessly. He wakes with a start, his sheets damp with sweat, his chest slick with it too. The clock on the far side of the room chimes twice, and then the only sound is John’s breathing, shallow and panicked.

Laszlo. Sleepless nights. Hand in hand.

He lays there for a while, staring at the ceiling. In the darkness it seems to shift, sinking downwards, a thick black fog. He presses his back down into the mattress and closes his eyes. If Laszlo came calling now, it would be a welcome distraction. He wishes for it under his breath. _Come, come, and I will follow you_. The longing bears no fruit. Something that John has learnt over the years is that very rarely does Laszlo arrive in the moments that you want him to.

John sits up as gently as he can. His legs ache from the long climb yesterday, and he’s barely sat down since. Yesterday’s newspaper and a pencil are within reach, so he falls into that familiar action of reading and sketching all at once, his eyes moving with great effort while has hands move with none. Later, he will meet with Laszlo to show him his sketches, and to answer any questions his friend may have. He does not begrudge this. He’ll sleep better tonight after unburdening himself. He’ll leave the drawing with Laszlo, find a willing girl to take his mind off of what he’s seen, and come back here to sleep it off.

-

That plan, like most of John’s, does not hold course. He dreams, and he drinks, and getting through the day starts to feel like an insurmountable task. Laszlo doesn’t indicate that he’s noticed – not with words. He does look though, and John can feel that gaze as it settles on the tightness of his shoulders, or his hand as he rubs at his eyes. John has no desire to become one of Laszlo’s patients, or one of his curios that he studies in his spare time. So he says nothing, even when Laszlo’s stares become more challenging than inquisitive.

-

Laszlo is at his door, run through with rain. _My god_ , John thinks to himself. _The man is mad_. “What did you do?” he asks, standing aside to let Laszlo pass. “Walk here?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Laszlo says, teeth chattering. “I ran, for the most part.” He has a parcel bound in leather cradled to his chest, which he has appeared to guard with more care than, well, himself. “I thought of something,” he says. “And you know how they can disappear by morning. Thoughts. Christ, it’s cold.”

“Sit down you fool,” John says, and he pulls Laslzo’s wet coat from him. “I’ll have dinner brought up, if you want it.” He gestures towards the fireplace, and his reading chair beside it. A book is still laid open on the arm.

Laszlo nods. He must be distracted if he’s being so agreeable. Hell, he must have been driven out of his mind to come to John when he knows that John will come to him so readily. John fetches a robe for him while they wait for dinner. When he comes back, Laszlo has already started on his shirt. His hand is unsteady. John clears his throat. "Do you want me to-" and he gestures at where Laszlo is trying to work one of the buttons loose between his finger and thumb. 

Laszlo sighs. He would choose to sit there in his wet clothes if he wasn't so cold. "Yes," he says. "Just-" 

"Be quick, I know," John finishes. He unfastens the waistcoat, and then the shirt too. He turns his back while Laszlo shrugs his way out of it, a well practised motion. The thought of Laszlo half naked behind him tempts and taunts him in equal measure. Laszlo is so buttoned up, so pressed into neat creases. To see him like that, bare-chested by the open fire, would be-

A cough breaks him from that reverie. He turns, and Laszlo is there, in his chair as if he is the proprietor here. The robe is too big. It gapes around Laszlo's neck, and John can see the barest hint of his collarbone. John swallows. His grandmother is asleep, blessedly. What she’d make of Laszlo draped over the furniture like this doesn’t bear thinking about.

Laszlo looks up from his notes, and doesn’t smile – not quite. There is a softness there though, something that he reserves for moments where John does well enough to earn it. Clad in John’s clothes, as affectionate as he allows himself to be – it’s almost too much to bear.

“So,” Laszlo says. “Shall we get started?”

The fire spits and crackles. John pulls up a chair.

-

John can’t remember when it was that he started to care for Laszlo so deeply, but he’s never been surprised by it. He’s held both sexes in equal affection for as long as he can recall. It’s never given him cause to feel disgusted or sorrowful, but he does sometimes have to bear it with a grim acceptance – especially where Laszlo is concerned.

Before these nightmares started, he would dream of Laszlo taking him to bed. Sometimes it would be Laszlo pushing him down into the mattress, using him as a means to bring about his own pleasure. Other times, he’d gasp against John’s mouth, tugging at his hair. Invariably, John would wake in a rather delicate situation. Over the years, he’d learned to just roll over and go back to sleep, paying little attention to the arousal pooling low in his belly.

Sometimes he wonders how Laszlo satisfies his urges. Does he visit whores, or does he take Mary to bed if she is willing? Or perhaps he has risen above those desires now. John wouldn’t be surprised. A particularly wicked thought that John has sometimes is that Laszlo is entirely incapable of loving. Love would be a weakness and Laszlo, after all, seems to believe himself lacking in those.

Sometimes though, Laszlo does something that makes John reconsider. He’ll offer his hand when John steps out of a carriage, or he'll fill John’s glass without asking. Sometimes he’ll touch John on the forearm, and that is almost enough to undo John completely. These moments are rare, so John hoards them in his thoughts. Just when they are fading, and John is at his wit’s end with Laszlo, there will be another that makes John, against all reasonable thought, hope.

Hope rarely serves John well.

-

Laszlo sits at the piano, tapping his fingers against its closed lid. _One two three, one two three._ Outside, the wind makes itself known by rattling the windows in their frames. It is cold, bitterly so. The fire does little to help the chill that’s settled deep in John’s bones. Nor does the drink, but he indulges anyway. Laszlo doesn’t say anything as he pours the scotch into the glass, but his eyebrows draw together. He’s irritated. They both, all, are.

They are gaining no ground on the killer – not tonight, anyway. They have been sitting here for hours, poring over books for something, anything. Marcus and Lucius are long gone, Sara too – the empty glasses on the side table the only sign that they were here. Dinner sits neglected in the next room. Laszlo lets himself go hungry when he’s working, and John can barely hold a fork without his hand shaking tonight. Dinner would not have been pleasant. Laszlo’s looks he can deal with, but Sara’s concern would be too much to take.

“Well?” Laszlo says, and John jumps. He’d been drifting off, Laszlo’s company and the crackling fire enough to lull him into not quite sleep, but something close. He looks down at his hand, where his glass is leaning perilously in his grip. Perhaps Laszlo is concerned for his carpets.

“Well,” John says dumbly. Laszlo just stares, but there might be a smile there. God, they’re so tired. “Well what?”

“I said that it’s snowing outside,” and oh, so it is. “You could stay. I’ll have a bed made up.” Laszlo says could but means will, even if he doesn’t know it himself.

John thinks of last night, where he had screamed himself awake, much to the horror of the maid. To do the same here would not only be mortifying, but selfish. Here is a house unburdened by unrest. “I don’t want to trouble you,” John says. “I could still make it-”

Laszlo raises a hand to stop him mid-sentence. “Never,” he says. “I insist.” He speaks now like he does with Sara, carefully, gently. John feels a little strange thinking about that, as if he’s pulling some part of himself taut. He gulps down the rest of his drink. Christ, it’s like bathwater. You can tell that Laszlo is an unseasoned drunk.

The silence stretches on, Laszlo looking at John expectantly. “Fine,” he says at last. Glass still in hand, he is led to his bed.

Outside the bedroom door, Laszlo stops him with a hand on his arm. The effort of standing still is almost as unbearable as putting one foot in front of the other, but the touch is enough to stop him dead. It is searing.

“Are you well?” Laszlo asks him, his voice quiet. “You don’t seem yourself tonight.” For a moment, John considers telling him. He is so weary though, he is not sure where that confession will lead. There are other far more dangerous truths that he could share here in the dark. Best he keeps his dreams to himself, for both of their sakes.

He smiles. “As well as I can be.”

Laszlo leaves his hand on John’s arm for a moment. They are so close, and so, so alone. Then the moment, if it even lasted as long as that, passes. Laszlo takes his hand away, and nods. “I’m just down the hall,” he says, as if John is doing this for the first time. As if John isn’t acutely aware of his proximity wherever they go.

When the bedroom door is shut behind him, John rubs at the spot where Laszlo gripped his arm. He thinks of Marcus and Lucius and their talk of fingerprints and wonders what Laszlo’s look like; and if they are still lingering there, now impossible to tell from John’s own.

-

John jolts awake, gasping for breath. The dreams are so vivid, breathtakingly so. The unfamiliar surroundings have him reeling for a moment, and he pulls the covers up to his chin as if to protect himself. It all comes back to him soon enough. Here he is, two doors away from Laszlo, safe as any man could hope to be.

In his bedroom back at home, there is a flask in the top drawer of his bedside table, hidden under a handkerchief and a rusting tin of watercolours. His hand twitches for it now. He doubts that Laszlo has laid on some liquor for him, and he scrunches the sheet in that hand instead.

He looks over at the doorway. Light pours in through the gaps between the door and the frame. Perhaps Laszlo is still awake. The urge to go to him, as certain and regular as a sunrise, makes itself known. John ignores it. Laszlo hardly needs protecting here.

Somehow, his breathing slows and he slips into slumber once more. As first he sleeps deeply, but then they start again, those luminous horrors. Laszlo, throat cut, arranged on a slab. He isn’t wearing his waistcoat, which is what distresses John the most. “Let me,” he says to the shapeless figure beside him who is already disappearing. “Let me dress him.”

He kneels on the ground next to Laszlo, his chin resting on cold marble. The ruin of Lazslo’s neck reminds him of a blooming flower; the plush, lush red of a rose. He reaches out to touch it, which is when Laszlo reaches out to touch him. He sits upright, pulling on John’s wrist roughly. He has something to tell him, but his cut throat stops him from being able to speak. His hands are cold, the coldest thing that John has ever felt.

Laszlo brings John’s hands towards his throat, and even inches away from the cut John can feel how much warmer this part of Laszlo is. He tells Laszlo this, and Laszlo laughs. Well, tries to. What comes out instead is a horrible gargling sound, and blood pours out of the cut, soaking Laszlo’s shirt red. John wants to get him a clean one. “I’ll be back,” he tells him. Only now Laszlo is on his back once more, motionless.

His eyes are gone.

“-John!”

There is a hand on his shoulder, and he flinches. The pressure is insistent though, and John whimpers. “Come on,” the voice says again. “Wake up.” John shouts as he does, his legs thrashing against the confines of the covers. He doubts that he would have been able to stop himself even if he had tried.

There above him is Laszlo. He sighs as their eyes meet, and the grip that he has on John’s shoulder recedes. “John,” he says again, and John expects him to follow this with orders to leave. He doesn’t though. Just breathes out John’s name and looks at him. Laszlo isn’t easily frightened, but John is beginning to suspect that he might have managed it here.

His stomach roils then, and John rolls over onto his front, reaching under the bed for the chamberpot. He retches, but there is barely anything to bring up – only Laszlo’s whiskey, and that’s hardly a waste. Despite that, he continues to heave, over and over. Eventually it stops, and he looks up at Laszlo. “What time is it?” he asks. His throat feels sore, overworked.

“A little after three,” Laszlo says. “I could hear you shouting from down the hall.”

John sits back against the headboard and tries to pull the covers over himself, to preserve what small piece of dignity he has left. “Cyrus? Mary?”

“Mary heard you, but I sent her away. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being made a spectacle of. Cyrus, luckily for you, sleeps like the dead.”

John lets his head fall back against the pillow. “A small blessing.” His head is pounding, and he knows that if he lets go of the bedsheets his hands will shake. It’s about now that, if he were at home, he’d pour himself a drink and wait for the sunrise. “Were you sleeping?” he asks Laszlo. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

Laszlo smooths down the sheet with his hand, over and over, before he speaks. “It’s a natural reaction to trauma, you know.” He looks at John so levelly. “It’s to be expected.”

“Do you,” John begins, and it feels momentous. He doesn’t try to carry on.

“Yes,” Laszlo says. “I dream of terrible things, or sleep eludes me altogether.”

“I didn’t know,” John says, and he feels genuinely ashamed. For so long he has catalogued every indication of Laszlo’s emotions, of his well-being. It seems that lately, he has not been looking hard enough.

“I didn’t want you to know,” comes Laszlo’s reply, and he says it so bluntly John can’t help but laugh. “What?” he says.

“We’re not very good at keeping something from each other for long, that’s all. It never lasts.”

Laszlo opens his mouth as if he is going to say something, but no words come out. He returns to running his hands over the duvet, and the repetitive noise of his palm against the fabric starts to make John nod off again. Just as his eyes are starting to drift shut, Laszlo clears his throat. “What were you dreaming of?” he asks.

John can feel sleep tugging at him, but he keeps his eyes open long enough to reply. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he says. Laszlo doesn’t respond, but before sleep claims him again, John feels him run a hand over his flank. He imagines that he can feel the heat of it through the covers.

-

It’s hard to go back to normal, knowing what they know about each other. To know that the other is so affected by what they are uncovering, all while trying to not let on to anyone else that they do – well. It’s difficult. John has to stop himself from reaching out to steady Laszlo, and he can tell that Laszlo is biting his tongue where once he would have snapped. That’s not to say that they manage to rein those urges in completely. John is glad that they don’t.

Sara knows that something has changed between them – because she is a woman, and they are infinitely more knowledgeable. She stands back sometimes, as if she is studying them. Laszlo grows even more agitated at being observed than he does when he is the one doing the observing, and this makes Sara smile. Sometimes she’ll share one of those smiles with John from across the room – their own little currency.

John drifts during their conversations sometimes. It’s impossible to tell what it is that causes it these days. Is it the lack of sleep? The drink? The sheer scale of the task that looms before them? He doesn’t try to pinpoint it. He will drive himself mad that way. He has long been on the path to ruin, his body feels wrung out and hollow. Perhaps he was born this way, and all of these dark dealings have bought it to light. A wreck of a man.

He looks over at Laszlo, who is leaning against the wall. He has his eyes closed, and his chin is tilted upwards. He looks at peace. The knowledge that John possesses, that Laszlo is in fact not, makes itself known with a sharp, neat twist in his gut.

“John?” comes Sara’s voice.

He snaps his head towards the sound, whipcrack quick. She is frowning, which is nothing out of the ordinary today. John hasn’t once thought about how she might be coping in all of this. _When this is over,_ he thinks, _I’ll make sure that I right that._

“What?” he says.

“You seem...distracted,” she says. “Are you quite alright?”

John opens his mouth to answer, and then Laszlo’s hand is on his shoulder. A perfect mimicry of how he had shook John awake just a week ago. John has to close his eyes, the onslaught of touch and memory too much for him to sit and smile through.

“He’s fine,” Laszlo says sharply. To anyone else he sounds like he always does – confident, keen to move the conversation on to something more pressing. John knows him too well to fall for it. He sees how Laszlo holds himself stiffly, how he leans into the hold he has on John. He hears it in his voice too. Something tight, something worried.

-

They share a carriage the next evening. Usually the motion lulls John to sleep, especially if he has been drinking. Tonight though, he is strung tight, unable to control his thoughts as they rattle around in his head. Laszlo looks worse, for once. He’s grey with exhaustion. He is a man who chooses to work himself down to his sinews, but this is not tiredness borne of choice.

“Stay,” he says to John as they reach his street. It’s not a question – Laszlo is rarely polite enough for those these days.

John shakes his head. “I won’t disturb you again,” he says. “Waking up the whole house was mortifying enough the first time around.”

Laszlo shakes his head. “I don’t care,” he says. He grows petulant when he’s tired, or angry, or-

The carriage comes to a stop suddenly, and John hears Cyrus swear. Too tired to hold himself upright, he sags forward, only steadying himself with both hands braced on Laszlo’s thighs. When he looks up at him, his expression is unreadable. “Stay,” he says again. “There’s still a lot we can do tonight.”

“Anyone would think that you like my company,” John says. He means for it to come out airily, and a few weeks ago it would have. Now it’s half a question, half a dare. _Go on,_ he insists somewhere in the minute pauses between each syllable. _Admit it._

Laszlo doesn’t bite – he never does. “I don’t care much for what anyone else thinks,” he says. But then his face softens minutely, one of those not- quite smiles that drive John to despair. “But I know what I think, and I’d like you to stay.”

“I’ll get quite the reputation,” John breathes.

“As if you haven’t already,” Laszlo says. “I’m a mere footnote in your great volumes of debauchery.”

Cyrus opens the door then, so John doesn’t have to sit there opposite Laszlo and think about how his mouth looks wrapped around that word. Debauchery. He straightens quickly, sitting back in his chair with unnecessary force.

“Will I be taking you on home, Sir?” Cyrus asks John.

John looks back at Laszlo, and doesn’t break eye contact as he responds. “You’ll take a message for me,” he says. “But I’ll be going no further.”

Laszlo’s mouth does turn up at the corners then, ever so slightly.

-

There are open books everywhere he looks. Photographs too. Both texts and pictures are impossibly ghoulish. John picks up one – a poor soul called Mary Jane Kelly pictured on a filthy bed, body defiled beyond belief. He puts it down again quickly, and wishes that there was a bowl of water in which he could rinse his hand clean.

Laszlo paces, up and down the room like a jumped-up little soldier itching to shoot something. “Do you have anything to drink?” John asks him, which at least gets him to stop marching.

“Oh,” Laszlo says. “Yes, somewhere.” He rummages in the cabinet for a moment before producing something that looks like it was of dubious origin even before it was watered down. John would be better off filling a glass from the Hudson. Laszlo must catch him looking at it uncertainly, because he laughs. “Don’t you have anything in your flask?” he asks.

John pulls it from his pocket and shakes it. “We’re all dried out, I’m afraid.”

Laszlo shakes his head. “Come,” he says. “Sit. I don’t care if you finish the whole bottle.”

They fall into conversation that’s easy, and John thinks of how things used to be, before their days were sullied with murder and other unspeakable horrors. When Laszlo would drag him to the opera, and John would infuriate him by giving him an outrageously incorrect run-down of the plot when they stood in the street after. That was the height of disagreement between them, and John aches for it. He loves Laszlo, but he was his friend before anything else.

Mary comes in with some food, and she looks at John strangely, as if she is trying to communicate some common truth that they alone would understand. “Thank you,” he says to her. “Really.”

“No matter how bad things get,” Laszlo tells him when she is gone. “You never stop trying to be kind.” He swirls his spoon through his soup, and the metal clinks against china. “Even when it comes at a great effort.”

“Is that a failing of mine?” John asks.

“Quite the opposite,” Laszlo says. “It’s why people li-”

“-like me more than they do you,” John says.

Laszlo laughs again, and how well John is doing, to earn two of those in one night. “I am tolerated, it’s true.”

 _Not to me you aren’t_ , John wants to say. “You have your uses,” he says instead. It comes out softly, and there’s no disguising the fondness there. He looks at Laszlo, takes in his ever more slight frame and wan face, and thinks that his heart will burst.

He takes a swig of his drink.

-

The room feels different this time, as if John has left some part of himself here. He shifts around under the covers, ghostly hands at his shoulders, at his hip. It’s no phantom that he imagines is touching him, which only makes it worse. What he’d give to be haunted by ghosts, rather than flesh and blood.

Laszlo’s whiskey does taste foul, but a generous measure puts him into enough of a stupor to fall asleep after an hour or so. The rest he gets is fitful, pitiful. He drifts in and out of it, dreaming all the while. The dreams don’t hold their form once he wakes, so he can only grasp at them before they fade entirely. A man, face down in a pool of red, his back bent at an unnatural angle. Laszlo, walking by him in the street without acknowledging him. A knife plunged into his stomach, the hand holding it without an arm to call its own. A catalogue of small terrors. He wakes from each one hoping that Laszlo will be sitting there at the edge of the bed again.

The fourth time he falls asleep is different. This time it is deep, a slumber that is molasses thick. He dreams of Laszlo, unsurprisingly. He straddles John, trapping his torso between his thighs. It’s hard to breathe, but John doesn’t fight it. Laszlo is toying with a revolver, turning it over and over in his hands. John reaches for it, and Laszlo points it at him.

“You’d let me,” he says. He aims it at John’s head. If he were to shoot, the bullet would strike him dead in the glabella. A clean shot.

“Yes,” John says. “I would.”

Laszlo laughs. Not the same kind of laugh from earlier, but a cruel one. He pulls out a knife instead, the revolver vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. He hauls John up roughly, pulling him to his chest. With one hand he holds John’s jaw, and with the other he presses the knife into John’s back. That, there, is the tell. John still doesn't wake. “I wonder who would go first,” he says. “If I put this thing through the both of us.”

“Try it,” John says.

Laszlo, for once, does what John tells him. John feels an innumerable amount of things essential to surviving shatter inside him; a crush, a crack. It hurts. He looks down between them, and sees that the blade is spearing them both. Bizarrely, there is no blood. Laszlo twists the knife then, and John screams.

He wakes with a start, eyes flying open. Laszlo is there this time, and John reaches for him without thinking. Laszlo’s hand is stiff in his, and such is the intensity of John’s grip he thinks for a moment that he will break it. Then Laszlo squeezes John’s hand back, and the breath leaves him all in a rush. His dream fades into insignificance. The likeness of Laszlo that he conjured – it was nothing. It pales next to this.

“I wanted you,” he says, meaning it in every possible way. Then, a clarification. “I wanted you to be here.”

“You could have come to me,” Laszlo says. John thinks of that night over a week ago. _I’m just down the hall._

“Were you waiting?” John says.

A second that stretches out into an immeasurable amount of time. Then Laszlo nods. “I think I’ve been waiting for a long time. And so have you.”

“That’s bold of you,” John says, as if he is in any position to deny a thing.

“I know you,” Laszlo says, and rolls his shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I know how your mind works.” He looks at John with intent, gaze skirting to his collarbone. It is a look that says that he knows how John’s body works too, how he wants to see how it can work for him specifically. John rarely flushes, but he does then.

“You’ve ruined my mind,” John says. “Ever since that first night you summoned me, I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time. I keep dreaming of what I’ve seen. Of what I might yet see.”

Laszlo lets go of Laszlo’s hand, and reaches for the edge of the covers instead. For a delirious moment John thinks that he is going to slide back the quilt and pull it over the pair of them. Instead, Laszlo leans in. “I don’t think it’s what you’ve seen that’s keeping you up at night,” he whispers. “It’s loneliness.”

A clean, true strike. It winds John for a second or two. “You’re infuriating,” he manages to say. “Why on Earth do I put up with you?”

“You know why,” Laszlo says. He enunciates each word so precisely. It almost sounds like a challenge. John responds in turn.

“Ask me,” he says. “Ask me instead of waiting.”

Laszlo never takes well to orders, but tonight is a strange night. “Come to my room,” he says. “If you want to.”

John is certain that the longing would have killed him before too long. So he leaves his bed behind and follows Laszlo down the hall.

-

“What were you dreaming of?” Laszlo asks when the door is shut behind them.

“You,” John says. He leans against the wall, Laszlo against the door. “It’s always you.”

“Why does that affect you so much?” Laszlo asks him. His voice has dropped to a whisper. He moves to stand in front of John, and presses his hand to the wall, just right of John's shoulder.

“Because you hurt me,” John says. He closes his eyes and leans forward. He could rest his head on Laszlo’s shoulder, they are that close. Because he is a fool, because he feels more tired and wretched than he has in years, he does it. Laszlo inhales sharply, but makes no move to push John away.

John turns his head to the side, his lips barely an inch away from where Laszlo’s pulse is hammering wildly beneath his skin. He breathes out slowly, and Laszlo shudders, bringing his hand to the back of John’s head. John doesn’t move. He’s afraid that if he does, whatever strange spell that has been cast over Laszlo will be broken, and that’ll he’ll push him away. The thought of that is unbearable.

“John,” Laszlo breathes. “Look at me.” He doesn’t take his hand away from John’s head, and cradles it as John looks up. They face each other, Laszlo standing tall, John lax against the wall. John brings a hand to Laszlo’s waist.

Laszlo is flushed, his hair mussed. For once, he looks nervous. John has never not found him beautiful, but right now it is maddening. John will die if he doesn’t kiss him. Even if Laszlo casts him out into the night for it, even if he never speaks to him again, he must do it.

“I don’t know what to do,” Laszlo says. It comes out as pained as a terrible confession, an admission of an awful sin. His gaze shifts to John’s mouth, the most willing mouth. His own falls open slightly. “You’ve changed something in me.”

“I won’t force you. I’ll go back to my room. I’ll be gone by morning.” John says, and Laszlo’s hand tightens in his hair. He gasps, and Laszlo’s eyes widen. “Tell me to and I’ll go,” he says. “We don’t have to speak of this again.”

Laszlo doesn’t say anything for a moment, and John thinks that their time is up. He braces himself for it, right up until Laszlo speaks. “You never answered my question.”

John gawps. He cannot help it. “What are you talking about?”

“I asked you why dreaming of me affects you so much.”

“You know why,” John says, a perfect echo of Laszlo not even half an hour ago. Laszlo kisses him then, and John’s back curves away from the wall. It is a lightning shock of bliss, to have Laszlo’s mouth exactly where it should have been for years. His beard is rough against John’s jaw when he moves his lips there. John hauls him close, hooks a leg over his hip. Laszlo groans, a deep noise that John has never heard before. He urges John’s leg down and tugs at him. Eternally impatient.

They fall to the bed like that, Laszlo pressed up against him, a line of searing heat. He murmurs against John’s collarbone, but John is too far gone to make sense of anything he is saying. _I want him inside me_ , he thinks to himself, and the thought arrives with such potency, a god-damn slug to the gut. John turns his head into the pillow and groans, overwhelmed by mind and body alike.

“Yes,” Laszlo says, as if he can read minds now. His hand comes up to grip at John’s hip, and John spreads his legs, feels the ache between them spread too. He’s not above begging, he feels mad with whatever is unfolding here. He doesn’t need to though. Not yet. He wants. Laszlo wants as well. It’s as it should be.

John makes quick work of his own nightclothes, throwing them to the floor. When John is naked, Laszlo looks without trying to disguise it. His eyes roam over the planes of John’s chest, the quick rise and fall of it. Then they drift lower, to where John’s cock juts upwards. John isn’t used to being admired like this, but he lets Laszlo look his fill for a while.

Then Laszlo is pressed against him, the soft fabric of his nightclothes rubbing against sensitive skin. “Take this off,” John gasps, grasping at Laszlo’s nightshirt. It’s damp with sweat, despite the cold. John feels like he is burning too. Laszlo kisses him again, and while he does that, John busies himself with the buttons, careful despite the urgency he feels. He splays a hand against Laszlo’s stomach as the shirt falls open, feeling the soft strength there. Laszlo makes a little noise against his mouth, and presses himself further into the cradle of John’s hips. He hasn’t been touched like this in a while, John can tell.

“How-” Laszlo says before cutting himself off. He’s flushed. God, maybe he has never indulged in this before, the most forbidden of desires.

“I’ll show you,” John hears himself say. “I’ll show you how good it can feel.” He has never failed Laszlo, and he won’t start now. “You’ll have me like this,” he says. After a beat, he speaks again. “If that’s how you want it.” He has no idea of what long held fantasies Laszlo is hoping to fulfil tonight – he can only draw on his own.

Laszlo, thank God, seems to be in agreement with John’s plan. He nods curtly, an almost absurd gesture given the situation. He leans to the side, hips still cradled between John’s legs, and opens the drawer by his bed. John steadies him with a hand on his waist while he does. A little glass bottle is pressed into John’s hands, or rather, held between his and Laszlo’s own. He thinks of the bottle of whiskey stashed away in his bedside table, there to satisfy his urges in the early hours. He wonders if this little bottle of slick is what Laszlo uses to relieve his. His head spins at the thought.

“Do you want to?” he asks. He looks at Laszlo’s hand, at the length of his fingers. He imagines how two or three of them will feel pressed up inside of him. Still, he’ll get himself ready while Laszlo watches, if that’s what he needs John to do for him. “I can-”

Laszlo tightens his grip on the bottle, his face serious. “I’m familiar with the mechanics, thank you.”

“How familiar?” John asks before he can stop himself. He unscrews the bottle, and watches, rapt as he pours the oil onto Laszlo's hand.

“I know my own body,” Laszlo snaps, curling a finger. Then, he speaks more gently. “I know my own desires.”

John feels faint at the thought of that, dizzy on his own arousal and the thought of Laszlo’s. An endless loop of wanting. Then Laszlo’s finger is pressed up against him, and all coherent thought scatters. “Please,” he says. His breath catches in his throat when he is breached, and he reaches for Laszlo’s shoulder to ground them both.

It doesn’t take long – it never does. John’s body always accepts this willingly, eagerness at the thought of what is approaching helping his muscles to slacken in no time at all. Before long, John is helping to pull Laszlo's trousers off. Then Laszlo is taking himself in hand, slicking up his cock to do what John has been dreaming of for years.

“Come here,” he says, and Laszlo does just that. John lifts his leg to ease the way, and his hand is back at Laszlo's shoulder to steady him. Then, Laszlo pushes forwards. Gently at first, and when John doesn't protest, with more intent. 

His body always tricks itself at this point, changes tact and tries to tell him that it hurts. There is no pain though, not really. There is only yielding, and after that, pleasure. He breathes through it, the impossible pressure, and slowly, it fades. He raises his hips a little, and Laszlo presses in a little more, and a little more, a series of monumental increments. John isn’t quiet – he could never manage that. What he can manage is wordless encouragement; a sigh that gives way to a groan, a touch that gives over to urging. “Move,” he says. He is shaking. They both are.

Laszlo, pliant with pleasure, does as John asks. He drives forward, his weight borne between his own splayed palm and John's hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps rocking back and forth, mindless with the newness of this. John shifts, and so does Laszlo, and _yes,_ there it is. John moans, paying no thought to restraint. Laszlo looks down at him, brow furrowed with effort. “Good?” he asks, and God, his voice is ruined.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” John says. He leans up, brings their mouths within touching distance. “I’ll show you someday.”

That makes Laszlo’s breath hitch, and his hips stutter. For a moment John thinks that he has spilt, undone by a promise of things to come. Then he thrusts again and strikes that spot deep up inside John for good measure. Laszlo kisses him as he does, and John goes near boneless with pleasure.

“I’ve thought about this another way,” Laszlo says against his mouth. A hundred scenarios unfold in John’s mind. “I thought about y- _ah_. I thought about you on top of me.” The words leave him in a rush.

“I could think of worse things,” John says. He can think of nothing better. He moves so that Laszlo can sit back against the pillows, and then lowers himself down into Laszlo's lap, the way made easier now. Laszlo is so much deeper inside him like this, and the unrelenting fullness makes John gasp. His cock twitches against his stomach.

Laszlo rakes his nails down John’s thigh, leaving thick blushing welts in their wake. “Don’t come yet,” he says. “Not until I tell you to.”

John whines, a horrid, needy little sound. This makes Laszlo smile, and he reaches up to pull at John’s hair again. John slumps forward, gasping against the skin of Laszlo’s bare shoulder. “Here’s me thinking that you didn’t know what you were doing,” he says. His leg stings, and Laszlo’s hand is still tight in his hair. The pain makes pleasure pool low in him.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Laszlo says. A thrust; a short, sharp one. “I’ve devoted a great deal of time to thinking about you like this. Out of your mind with desire.”

“Hours of research, no doubt,” John says.

“Shut up,” Laszlo says. He holds John still and works his hips in circles. “Just let me-” and he moans then, genuinely. The sound is so shockingly erotic that John jumps, and Laszlo strikes that spot within him again. “Stay like this, just let me fuck you.”

John braces his hands on the headboard and does just that. Just lets Laszlo drive into him at a brutal pace, wringing pleasure from every part of his body. His toes curl with it, his thighs tremble. He won’t last long. He tries to communicate this by moving in time with Laszlo, reining in the pace a little. He moves a hand downwards, rakes a nail against a nipple, twists it between his fingers. This Laszlo likes, judging by the way he grits his teeth and groans through them. His hips jerk, and John makes a noise too.

It’s hopeless really, trying to make it last. It is much easier to just relax in Laszlo’s hold, to let his body be held and shaped, a string tightening and slackening to a higher will. Laszlo is quiet while he works towards his climax, but he bites his lip as he gets close. Sweat beads along his hairline, and John wipes at it with his thumb. Laszlo leans into the touch, and the tenderness of it, of them in this moment, makes John’s heart ache.

“John,” Laszlo says, the last part of the word breaking apart into a gasp. “I’m going to-”

“Please,” John says, and he is begging now, unashamedly. “Come on, I want you to come, I want you t-”

John feels it first, Laszlo going rigid, his fingernails working into the skin of John’s hips. Laszlo looks shocked, which is a first. His eyes are wide, his mouth open. Then, as he gives himself over to just feeling, he lets his head fall back and sighs, his body moving helplessly. It is mesmerising, and John forgets about everything else, even his own arousal, as he watches. This is the Laszlo that has eluded him for so long.

Eventually, Laszlo stills. John is sure that he’ll come with just one touch of his hand, but he waits. He squirms on Laszlo’s cock, and Laszlo grips at his arm, hissing with the overstimulation of it. He looks at John, then down to where he is still hard and aching. “You didn’t,” he says.

“You told me not to,” John says.

Laszlo smiles, a slow, lazy thing. He’s always been prone to cockiness, and John can only imagine what this is doing for his ego. “What would you do,” he says, his fingers ghosting along John’s length, “if I just left you like this?”

“I’d bear it,” John says, and then he cannot speak another word, because Laszlo is touching him. Finally. He works him quickly, relentlessly. John wonders if this is how Laszlo touches himself. He goes to move, to lift himself up a little, to buck into Laszlo’s grip. Laszlo shakes his head at that though, so John stills. Laszlo, satisfied that John will not move without being told to, begins in earnest.

Laszlo is efficient, but after a while, his perfectionism wins out. That need to do things well, or not at all. He pays attention to the noises that John makes, twists his hand just so and then slows down enough to have John pleading again. Over and over he does this, until it is torturous. “Can I,” he asks, barely able to get the words out through his shuddering.

Laszlo takes his hand away from John's cock to place it around his neck, and squeezes ever so slightly. The barest hint of pressure, and John keens. “Yes,” he says. “Come on, I want to feel it.” Then his hand is back between John's legs. With one last stroke, with the memory of Laszlo’s hand at his throat, John comes. Heat blooms in the pit of his stomach and spreads outwards in wave after wave. His breath catches on a sob, and he spills over Laszlo’s hand, then over his chest too. Laszlo shifts underneath him, making a surprised little sound, and John feels his spent cock twitch inside him.

They lay there in silence for a while, until John’s legs start to ache. He eases himself up, grimacing a little, and lies back on the bed beside Laszlo. Laszlo looks down at the mess on his chest and pulls a face. John laughs at this, and Laszlo rolls his eyes. “This is your fault entirely,” he says.

“You told me to,” John says, and well, what can Laszlo say to that? He reaches down for something to clean himself up with, and pulls John’s shirt from the floor. He looks at John questioningly, brandishing it in his hand. “It’s already ruined,” John says, looking at the rumpled wreck of it. “Have at it.”

John suspects that they should talk about what has unfolded here. This is something that they can never come back from, for better or worse. Never will he be able to look at Laszlo without thinking of this – unless there are to be other such nights. Then he will be able to look and look forwards, knowing that he is welcome here in Laszlo’s bed.

“Do you want to sleep?” Laszlo says. He doesn’t say here, but he doesn’t ask John to go back to the other bedroom either.

After a few seconds John nods. He makes no move to get up. They both look at each other, unsure of what will happen next. The tentativeness isn’t comfortable. Even in their worst moments, they have known exactly what to say to the other. Then Laszlo sighs, and pulls the covers over them both. “We’ll have to be up early,” he says, and John likes that word – we. Two letters, that given the right place, have boundless magnitude.

“I know,” John says, and he thinks of Mary and Cyrus sleeping upstairs, unaware of what has just occurred. They will have to be out of here before too long to make sure that it stays that way. He thinks of his own bed, and wonders how he can sneak Laszlo there, right under his grandmother’s nose. That makes him smile.

“What’s got you so cheery?” Laszlo asks, and John sees how his eyelids are drooping, how his face is softening into something that, a month ago, John wouldn’t have recognised.

“Tomorrow,” John says. “And the day after that. And the day-”

“John,” Laszlo says. “Just sleep.” He shifts under the covers, and John gets a sense of the solid warmth of him. He reaches out for it, and his hand settles in the dip between rib and hip. Laszlo is soft here, and John closes his eyes as protectiveness surges up in his chest. It feels urgent now, even more so than before. 

That night, John doesn’t dream. In the space between them in the bed, a thousand possibilities take shape, shuffling like a deck of cards. In the morning, they will be dealt.

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: fairly graphic/gory descriptions of nightmares + constant references to alcohol abuse. although if you already watch the show they probably won't bother you too much.


End file.
